Author Alex James Talks Repilians at Supanova

Supanova Sydney showcased a lot of creative talent including a strong contingent of authors. One such author was Alex James who is published via Galexy Tales. James is the author of the bestselling novel The Pandora Sequence. When Gamers Classified spoke to him, he was promoting the its sequel, The Pandora Inheritance, which was available for sale for the very first time at Supanova.

GC: You have several books here today. What one is the most recent one?

AJ: The most recent one is The Pandora Inheritance. It’s the sequel to my bestseller, The Pandora Sequence. This is the first time that I’ve had The Pandora Inheritance available for sale.

The Pandora Inheritance is a conspiracy thriller. It’s like the Da Vinci Code- it’s sort of like a science fiction spin on that story where the every man is drawn down a rabbit hole of things that shouldn’t be real but are.

GC: Where do you find your inspiration?

AJ: The inspiration for this came from being into Philosophy and Mystisicm, and being a sci-fi fan. Then, a media development company hired me to come up with stories.

Media development companies will find out what’s popular and say ‘we want a story like this’. They wanted something with aliens. They wanted something where the twist at the end [was that] aliens had intervened with human genetics. Because I was already interested in this topic for various reasons, I put my hand up straight away and ended up writing quite a big book. It’s jam-packed with lots of Philosophy and interesting ideas.

GC: I can see behind you that the covers for The Pandora Sequence and The Pandora Inheritance are quite different. Can you tell us what prompted you to have such a different look for each cover?

AJ: When I wrote The Pandora Sequence, the media development company told me that it was going to be a stand alone book. I did a lot of research on covers and found that one of the most recognised book covers in the science fiction genre was the cover for Communion by Whitley Strieber. It’s the classic picture of the Alien Grey with the big inverted triangular head and the big eyes. Because I was writing a similar kind of book about Reptilians, I thought ‘well, I’ll just mirror that idea with a big Reptillian face’. As you can see, [the Reptilian on the cover of The Pandora Sequence] has a business suit on. It’s about the idea of the Reptilian corporate world; the amoral world of business.

That book was super successful and did really well. The media development company took it to San Diego Comic Con in 2013. The only reason that the sequel has taken [this long to be released] is because these companies change on a whim. They decided that books weren’t the thing anymore so they decided that they weren’t going to do anymore books.

I got the rights back to The Pandora Sequence last year and have now written the second book which is a bit of a change of tone. The tone of this book is geared towards more of a female, new age genre so I went that way with the cover. I hired a brilliant artist from Melbourne. Her name is Lily McDonald and she’s come up with this cover. There are going to be four books in this series and we’re hoping to have the spines make one design but we can’t do that yet because the lengths of the books will vary. We’re hoping to do that as a special edition once the books have all been released.

GC: If people wanted to stay in touch with you or purchase your books, how can they do that?

AJ: The best place is my website, GalexyTales or search for ‘Galexy Tales’ on Amazon. It’s spelled that way because it’s Alex James of Galexy Tales.

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